November 17, 2005
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Second-Rate Filmmaker?
By Ann Coulter
As noted here previously, George Clooney's movie "Good Night, and Good Luck,"
about pious parson Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, failed to produce
one person unjustly accused by McCarthy. Since I described McCarthy as a great
American patriot defamed by liberals in my 2003 book, "Treason," liberals have
had two more years to produce a person -- just one person -- falsely accused
by McCarthy. They still can't do it.
Meanwhile, I can prove that Murrow's good friend Lawrence Duggan was a Soviet
spy responsible for having innocent people murdered. The brilliant and perceptive
journalist Murrow was not only unaware of the hundreds of Soviet spies running
loose in the U.S. government, he was also unaware that his own dear friend Duggan
was a Soviet spy -- his friend on whose behalf corpses littered the Swiss landscape.
Contrary to the image of the Black Night of Fascism (BNOF) under McCarthy leading
to mass suicide with bodies constantly falling on the heads of pedestrians in
Manhattan, Duggan was the only suicide. After being questioned by the FBI, Duggan
leapt from a window. Of course, given the people he was doing business with,
he may have been pushed.
After Duggan's death, Murrow, along with the rest of the howling establishment,
angrily denounced the idea that Duggan could possibly have been disloyal to
America.
Well, now we know the truth. Decrypted Soviet cables and mountains of documents
from Soviet archives prove beyond doubt that Lawrence Duggan was one of Stalin's
most important spies. "McCarthyism" didn't kill him; his guilt did.
During the height of the Soviet purges in the mid-'30s, as millions of innocents
were being tortured, exiled and killed on Stalin's orders, Murrow's good pal
Duggan was using his position at the State Department to pass important documents
to the Soviets. The documents were so sensitive, Duggan had to return the originals
to the State Department before the end of the day. Some were so important, they
were sent directly to Stalin and Molotov.
On at least one occasion, Murrow's dear friend Duggan sat with his Soviet handler
for an hour as the handler photographed 60 documents for the motherland. In
other words, Duggan was the kind of disloyal, two-faced, back-stabbing weasel
you rarely see outside of the entertainment industry. (He certainly was perceptive,
that Murrow.)
All this time, people Duggan knew personally were being falsely accused and
executed back in the Soviet Union. Duggan expressed concern about Stalin's purges
with his Soviet handler, but he didn't stop spying. As Allen Weinstein describes
it in "The Haunted Wood," Duggan was mostly concerned about being falsely accused
by Stalin himself someday.
Because of Murrow's good buddy Duggan, innocent people were killed. Not just
the millions murdered during the purges while Duggan was earning "employee of
the month" awards from Stalin. At least one man was murdered solely to protect
Duggan's identity as a Soviet spy.
Ignatz Reiss had been the head of Soviet secret police in Europe. As such, he
was aware of Soviet agents in the U.S., including Duggan. But unlike Duggan,
Reiss was stunned by Stalin's bloody purges. In 1937, Reiss defected from the
Soviet Union, threatening to expose Duggan if they came after him. It was his
death warrant.
Two months later, Soviet secret police tracked Reiss to a restaurant in Switzerland.
According to the official memo describing Reiss' murder, Soviet agents dragged
Reiss out of the restaurant, shoved him in a car, shot him and dumped his body
by the side of the road. (Or, in Soviet parlance, he was "debriefed.")
Soviet officials later happily informed Duggan's handler in America: "(Reiss)
is liquidated, (but) not yet his wife. ... Now the danger that (Duggan) will
be exposed because of (Reiss) is considerably decreased." Despite all Clooney's
double-sourced fact-checking, he missed the part about Murrow's good friend
Duggan being an accomplice to murder.
To hear these liberals carry on, "McCarthyism" was the worst thing that ever
happened in the history of the universe. No one has ever been so persecuted
or so heroic as Hollywood actors in the '50s.
At the exact same time as these crybabies were wailing about McCarthyism, there
was much worse going on in the parts of the world so admired by the Hollywood
left. It's not as if we have to go back to the Peloponnesian War to find greater
suffering than that of Hollywood drama queens during the BNOF under McCarthyism.
I believe anyone would find it preferable to have been a "target" of McCarthy
in the '50s than to have been an ordinary citizen living in the Soviet Union,
Hungary, Poland, the Ukraine or any nation infected by the Red Plague.
Thanks to McCarthy, and no thanks to Murrow, the worst horror to befall an American
citizen in the '50s was the dire prospect of losing a movie credit -- although,
since then, I suppose having to watch a George Clooney movie would run a close
second.
Copyright 2005 Ann Coulter
Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-11_17_05_AC.html